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Work accidents and injuries have always sparked my interest - the fact that ordinary, hard-working people end up injured, or in some awful cases, dead just for trying to earn an honest crust strikes me as plain wrong.
During my time as an 'angry young man' desperate to change bad things of the world, I remember writing to the local newspaper to highlight the plight of mainly teenagers and some young people aged in their early 20s who had died on government-organised youth training schemes.
In those days, they were known as YTS schemes. For a fixed time of a year or two, the government helped fund training with employers under an agreement to help young people start work. While not formal apprenticeships, it was no secret that they were designed to provide jobs for young people during tough economic times that included high unemployment.
As a youth interested in work options open to me, I took an interest in the situation. I became appalled to discover that young people were dying on these YTS schemes. Backed by official-dom, snapped up by employers, these young employees were being killed starting out in working life.
I can still remember writing my letter to the editor. After it had been submitted, the editor himself contacted me to check my facts. I had remembered trawling newspapers, magazines and visiting the library to ensure my research was correct.
At that time - the mid-1980s - the Internet did not exist as the popular, commercial tool that it was today. I recall it was used as some kind of defence and research network communications system and I'm not sure academia was using it then. Tim Berners Lee invented the hypertext system in 1989 that led to the now familiar linking approach that all websites use.
Anyway, I am digressing. Armed with my research compiled by non-Internet means, the local newspaper editor briefly checked my facts before agreeing to publish the letter.
Imagine my surprise when my letter was placed as the lead item on the letters pages of the paper for that week. The headline used was "An Exploitable Commodity".
That was my point. My brief foray into the world of political controversy and employment, as well as the world of health and safety, really did seem to have made its mark in the local community. With some friends being employed by companies on these youth training initiatives, my letter focused minds on the value of the schemes, at least for a short while on a local basis.
So it was with some interest that I have been reviewing the latest statistics from the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) for accidents at work, injuries and illnesses.
To my mind, people should not end up dying just because they must work. Yet, year in, year out, it is sad and upsetting to see this happens to hundreds - and over the years - thousands of people.
Instinctively, I find myself feeling some discomfort at the recent HSE statement that it welcomed improvements over the past year in the number of people being injured or made ill by work.
How can anyone welcome deaths and injuries? Of course, no-one welcomes that. Thankfully, it seems, the trend over the past decade has been downwards with deaths at work falling to 229 in the period 2007-2008 - a drop of five per cent.
For some people, the possibility to contact a personal injury claim, no win no fee solicitor might be seen as a way to achieve some kind of positive outcome from a disastrous situation - but really, nothing can replace a person's health.
Perhaps the next time that readers of this article note statistics about work-related fatalities, work accidents, injuries and illnesses, they might spare a thought for these tragic people - "exploitable commodities" in a commercial world that often seems more focused on profits than people's lives.
